This looks like what they do on "Trading Spaces" and the people come back and hate it.
The hay-on-the-wall episode!
Yeah.
Weasel = The weird gray fuzzy thing that sound techs put over their sticks' mikes at scrums to keep annoying wind-noise off the audio. It looks like a large floppy mouse-colored version of a certain popular kind of fuzzy bathroom slipper. (N.B.: Weasels, which are sometimes worn by sound techs as headgear during OTSs when it's really cold, are thus sometimes known as tech toupees.)(Don't buy the linked essay if you already have "Consider the Lobster." It's the same thing as "Up, Simba.")
Around midnight on July 16, New York Times chief political correspondent Adam Nagourney received a terse e-mail from Barack Obama's press office. The campaign was irked by the Times' latest poll and Nagourney and Megan Thee's accompanying front-page piece titled "Poll Finds Obama Isn't Closing Divide on Race," which was running in the morning's paper. Nagourney answered the query, the substance of which he says was minor, and went to bed, thinking the matter resolved.What was the query? Why are you being mean to me?
I thought you had a crush on him?You know what it's like? To continue with the "rockstar" trope. If a rockstar you like gets too popular and everyone's squealing over him, including a lot of people who seem to be excited by the popularity itself, well, then, it's just not cool to like him anymore. He's now popular for his popularity, and it makes you want to discover something new.
... Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen -- a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world....I guess we're not supposed to think about how Obama wanted and still wants to give up on the Iraq war. Surely, if he'd been there in 1948, he would have said the Berlin airlift is hopeless. He thought the surge was hopeless.
[O]n the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city. They cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin.
The size of our forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army. And yet retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe. Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun. All that stood in the way was Berlin.
And that's when the airlift began -- when the largest and most unlikely rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city.
The odds were stacked against success. In the winter, a heavy fog filled the sky above, and many planes were forced to turn back without dropping off the needed supplies. The streets where we stand were filled with hungry families who had no comfort from the cold.
But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up.
They want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives, something that will relieve a chronic loneliness or lift them above the exhausting, relentless toll of daily life. They need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them -- that they are not just destined to travel down a long highway toward nothingness.(Contextualized by me, here.)
There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best". Well, you fucking don't. This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.... 2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?Jesus with a bear? Some Christian iconography I haven't heard of? Or is that another one of his gay jokes, which it could be even if it is only a typo for "beard." I mean, I understand this Coren character is simultaneously fabulously subtle and crude.
3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.Scansion. Railing about scansion in prose. Metre is crucial. I agree! ADDED: I've searched the internet for Jesus with a bear and found this very cool painting from Jim Woodring.
(Click image to enlarge.)
So what is motivating Berliners and Germans in general to treat a Democratic presidential hopeful to such a royal welcome?...Good call!
In comparison to US elections, German political campaigns are short, stolid and sober affairs that focus as much on party platforms as personalities. In the wake of World War II, many Germans view charismatic leadership with mistrust.
That, however, doesn't mean that ordinary Germans or the media are immune to the aura of a politician who knows how to work a crowd.Ick. But it reminds me of the famous interview with Princess Diana:
The current edition of Germany's most serious news weekly, Der Spiegel, features Obama on its cover with the only vaguely ironic headline "Germany Meets the Superstar" -- a play on the title of the German version of the TV show "American Idol."
And many German bloggers do seem to idolize the Illinois senator.
"For me he already is the American president," wrote one user of a Website about Obama's Berlin visit. "He may not be have been elected, but he's the president in people's hearts."
MARTIN BASHIR: Do you think you will ever be Queen?Ah, so there's an angle if somehow Obama doesn't make it in the end. He can always be President of our hearts.
DIANA: No, I don't, no.
BASHIR: Why do you think that?
DIANA: I'd like to be a queen of people's hearts, in people's hearts, but I don't see myself being Queen of this country. I don't think many people will want me to be Queen.
Actually, when I say many people I mean the establishment that I married into, because they have decided that I'm a non-starter.
BASHIR: Why do you think they've decided that?
DIANA: Because I do things differently, because I don't go by a rule book, because I lead from the heart, not the head, and albeit that's got me into trouble in my work, I understand that. But someone's got to go out there and love people and show it.
When asked about this failed banana investment, Carole Breton, of the Canada Council, explained, "We understand that sometimes, for all sorts of reasons, there is no creation at the end . . . this is money for research, not for results."
The important thing here is that an evil person did an evil thing and that a good person (on a bicycle! which is quasi-sainthood) stopped it.
We can't let common sense get in the way of the narrative.
Yeah he was splayed on the windshield then he just slid off like one of those mishaps you see in a cartoon on TV.
Let’s hope that the Supreme Court would not permit Service Nation's move backwards to a more feudal relationship between ordinary people and the people who govern them. One senses that de Toqueville understood American values of volunteerism and freedom of association much better than the people behind Service Nation, an understanding that was also concerned about the tyranny of the majority.Service Nation. It sounds like the title of a dystopian novel.
service...But as Lindgren notes, one man's "justice nerve" is another man's "collectivist nerve." Something might sound so right to you, that you don't even notice how it sounds to others.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin servitium, slavery, from servus, slave.
This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.McCain basically added a sharp twist to one of his usual statements. The usual statement is touting his own aptitude and honor. The twist is to accuse Obama of the opposite.
I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major journalist. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether Klein has the right temperament for Time Magazine. How sad.
The reality is that neither Barack Obama nor Nouri al-Maliki nor most anybody else believes that the Iraq war can be "lost" at this point.The point is that Obama's judgment would have led this country to jump headlong into defeat. We now must decide if we want this man making choices about things that will arise in the future. Why is it necessary to spell it out again and again that we need to use past judgments to predict future judgments about new matters? I feel like an annoying pedant saying this again. But the reason it's necessary is that journalists like Klein are covering for Obama.
The reality is that no matter who is elected President, we are looking at a residual U.S. force of 30-50,000 by 2011 (a year ahead of the previous schedule). The reality is that McCain should be proud that he helped salvage a disastrous situation by pushing the counterinsurgency plan. It's something to run on. But, at this point, McCain must sense that it's not a winning hand. Obama, the poker player, has drawn to an inside straight: the Iraqis favor his plan over McCain's long-term bases. That must be galling. But it's no excuse to pop off the way McCain did. It was, shockingly, unpresidential.Oh, stop your idiotic gasping, Klein, and see what you just did! You reinforced McCain's point. You see the campaign for the presidency as a game to be won and the war as something to play with. McCain would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. If his insistence that we win the war now brings him defeat, while the man who chose defeat in the war wins the presidency, that is what McCain saw all along. To think, wow, he must really be pissed off about the way that played out is to show how you think, Klein.
Shocked to see a reporter, and without saying anything, Edwards ran up the stairs leading from the hotel basement to the lobby. But, spotting a photographer, he doubled back into the basement. As he emerged from the stairwell, reporter Butterfield questioned him about his hookup with Rielle.Amusement.
Edwards did not answer and then ran into a nearby restroom. He stayed inside for about 15 minutes, refusing to answer questions from the NATIONAL ENQUIRER about what he was doing in the hotel. A group of hotel security men eventually escorted him from the men's room, while preventing the NATIONAL ENQUIRER reporters from following him out of the hotel....
"He was clearly surprised that we had caught him at this very late hour inside the hotel.
"Some guests up at this late hour watched the spectacle in amusement from a staircase nearby."
Jeffrey L. Fisher, a law professor at Stanford who represented the defendant in the case, Patrick Kennedy, said “rehearing is completely unnecessary.” Military law does not apply to Mr. Kennedy, a civilian, Professor Fisher said, and Congress has not made child rape a capital offense for civilians.As I have already said, I think it is very important for the Supreme Court to rehear the case. The Court's analysis of "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" surveyed the law throughout the United States and drew conclusions without realizing that Congress, which represents all the states, had recently approved of the death penalty for the rape of a child (in a law applying to crimes in the military). From the now embarrassingly inadequate opinion:
Professor Fisher added that military law has long made rapes of both adults and children capital offenses in some circumstances. The innovation of the 2006 law was only to break out children as a separate category.
According to the petition filed Monday, the 2006 law is powerful evidence of the direction of public sentiment. “While Congress has not, as yet, applied the death penalty to child rape in the civilian context,” the petition said, “the recent trend (not to mention the general parity between military and civilian law today) indicates that it may very well do so, if given the opportunity.”
Louisiana reintroduced the death penalty for rape of a child in 1995. See La. Stat. Ann. §14:42 (West Supp. 1996).... Five States have since followed Louisiana’s lead: Georgia, see Ga. Code Ann. §16–6–1 (2007) (enacted 1999); Montana, see Mont. Code Ann. §45–5–503 (2007) (enacted 1997); Oklahoma, see Okla. Stat., Tit. 10, §7115(K) (West 2007 Supp.) (enacted 2006); South Carolina, see S. C. Code Ann. §16–3–655(C)(1) (Supp. 2007) (enacted 2006); and Texas, see Tex. Penal Code Ann. §12.42(c)(3) (West Supp. 2007) (enacted 2007); see also Tex. Penal Code Ann. §22.021(a) (West Supp. 2007)...This crucial passage is junk now.
By contrast, 44 States have not made child rape a capital offense. As for federal law, Congress in the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 expanded the number of federal crimes for which the death penalty is a permissible sentence, including certain nonhomicide offenses; but it did not do the same for child rape or abuse....
The evidence of a national consensus with respect to the death penalty for child rapists, as with respect to juveniles, mentally retarded offenders, and vicarious felony murderers, shows divided opinion but, on balance, an opinion against it. Thirty-seven jurisdictions—36 States plus the Federal Government—have the death penalty. As mentioned above, only six of those jurisdictions authorize the death penalty for rape of a child....
In throwing his support behind Senator Obama's plan for a 16-month timetable for an American withdrawal from Iraq, Prime Minister al-Maliki is calculating that Mr. Obama may well be the next president of America, and betting that a successful visit by Mr. Obama to Baghdad will advance Iraqi interests in a new administration.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said “Iraq” on Monday when he apparently meant “Afghanistan”, adding to a string of mixed-up word choices that is giving ammunition to the opposition.The problem with McCain's gaffes is that they augment fears that he is too old for the job. Obama's gaffes resonate with concerns we have about him too, but they are different concerns, and they are not as hard to overcome as McCain's age.
Just in the past three weeks, McCain has also mistaken "Somalia" for "Sudan," and even football’s Green Bay Packers for the Pittsburgh Steelers....
The McCain campaign says Obama has had plenty of flubs of his own, including a reference to "57 states" and a string of misstated place names during the primaries that Republicans gleefully sent around as YouTube links.
There's a mosquito on that guy's shirt.
If he was cuter, you would help him.
Yeah.
At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.Lauren may think it's absurd to imagine a God who involves Himself in conception, but many people do have this idea of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Why is it outrageous for the law to give them room to live by their beliefs?
The thing that snapped me into realizing I was dreaming was, uh-- was my digital clock. I couldn't really read it. It was like the circuitry was all screwed up or something.Dialogue from the film "Waking Life."
Yeah, that's real common. And small printed material is pretty tough too. Very unstable....
Anyway, I read this essay by Philip K. Dick.
What, you read it in your dream?
No, no. I read it before the dream.
In the July 16 installment of his program, which is broadcast every weekday, [Michael] Savage suggested that “99 percent of the cases” of autism were a result of lax parenting. He told his audience: “They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life.’ ” Among the other admonitions he felt children with autism should be hearing, he said, were: “ ‘Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’ ”It's painful even to think of the way parents of autistic children had to endure this blame on top of the difficulties and disappointments of having an autistic child. What an idiot Savage is to drag us back to those bad old days!
Asked Monday if he actually believed that 99 out of every 100 cases of autism were misdiagnosed, Mr. Savage conceded that figure was “a little high.” He added, “It was hyperbole.”...
“He characterizes children with autism who are very, very ill — disabled children — as essentially bad kids; the only thing wrong with them is they have parents who don’t discipline them,” said John Gilmore, executive director of Autism United and the father of an 8-year-old with a diagnosis of autism. “That completely misrepresents what is going on with children with autism.”
“Basically, what he’s doing is parroting what used to be said about autism 40 years ago, back in the heyday of Freudian analysis,” Mr. Gilmore added. “It was blamed on bad parenting. There wasn’t a shred of evidence to support that.”
Looks like "Bloggingheads: The Prequel!"...
Yeah...isn't that guy on the right Kaus?
Junkies and drunks frequently end up putting a megaphone to their own pratfalls in the form of memoir because they need to believe that all of the time they spent with their lips wrapped around glass, whether is was a bottle of vodka or a crack pipe, actually meant something. That impulse suggests that I don’t regret the past — it brought me here to this nice, happy place — but I’d also like to squeeze something more from it. And so I have.
"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months," he said in an interview with Der Spiegel that was released Saturday.But he also purportedly doesn't like the idea that people are interpreting that as tantamount to an endorsement of Barack Obama. A spokesman said his remarks "were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately." I'm assuming he spoke in Arabic, and the Arabic was translated into German by Der Spiegel and then retranslated into English. There's a lot you can do with a subtle statement that you get to translate twice and the temptation to influence the American election is so strong. I assume al-Maliki himself has his preference, much as he may cloak it, but surely, so does Der Spiegel and the various translators.
"That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."
This is, obviously, bad news for John McCain. As Joe Klein says, McCain's original support of the surge, which is his main talking point on Iraq policy, "is a small, tactical truth too complicated to be understood by most Americans. Maliki Endorses Obama Withdrawal Plan is a headline everyone can understand."He's combining 2 quite different things: 1. Whether the press will "decide that this means Obama has shown good judgment and good instincts in foreign affairs." Haven't they pre-decided that Obama is right about things? 2. How the press will write up the stories, i.e., how much they will let it show that they prefer Obama.
True enough, but only if that's the headline the U.S. media actually decides on. Unfortunately, we're in sort of a fluid phase right now in which the press seems unsure of what narrative to adopt on the current state of American foreign policy. Consider: (a) negotiations with North Korea have recently started paying off, (b) we sent a U.S. diplomat to talk with Iran over the weekend and are apparently thinking about opening an interests section in Tehran, (c) the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating, leading to calls for an increased troop presence, and (d) Maliki has endorsed the idea of a 16-month withdrawal timeline from Iraq. All of these are directions that Obama has endorsed for some time.
So does the press decide that this means Obama has shown good judgment and good instincts in foreign affairs? That seems like it would be the most reasonable interpretation, but alternatively the press could decide that what this really means is that there are now very few differences between Obama and McCain on foreign policy — without implying any judgment about who was right and who was wrong. That's a stretch, but it would be nice and faux-neutral, something that appeals to reporters.
McCain’s team put out a statement tonight, too. Quote:In this view it doesn't matter so much that "there are now very few differences between Obama and McCain on foreign policy."Let’s be clear, the only reason that the conversation about reducing troop levels in Iraq is happening is because John McCain challenged the failed Rumsfield-strategy in Iraq and argued for the surge strategy that is responsible for the successes we’ve achieved and which Barack Obama opposed. Unlike Barack Obama, John McCain has never ignored the facts on the ground in Iraq, he’s never avoided the warzone before proposing new strategy, and he’s never voted against funding our troops in the field. If John McCain was following Barack Obama’s lead on foreign policy, the United States would have already withdrawn from Iraq in a humiliating defeat at the hands of al Qaeda.Quite so, although I’d have re-written that as, “If John McCain and Nuri al-Maliki were following Barack Obama’s lead…” Barry O’s accomplished the foreign policy masterstroke here of screaming for withdrawal year after year when it would have been a horrific idea and now, with the jihadis and militias finally subdued to the point where it at least wouldn’t be disastrous, he wants credit for having been ahead of the curve. You truly are a visionary, Messiah.
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